u/Mathlete1

Ok, let's try this again!

I hope everyone's feeling healthy today, it's always best when the teams are at their best.

I don't have a player-level model, but even if I did I don't know how I would account for some players being ill yesterday; it was rumored who they were, but are they at 100% today? 50%? Hard to say.

Congratulations to the Charge! And respect to the Fleet. It taking multiple OTs to decide feels appropriate.

Maybe the secret to winning it all is making the playoffs on the last day of the regular season?

Edit: Game postponed as of ~4:42 ET due to illness. Wild stuff. I’ll post again once it’s rescheduled.

The show goes on

That Ottawa goal at the end of regulation was heartbreaking for Boston, hopefully they can force game 5.

Sidney Morin is my new hero.

The only consolation yesterday was not having to sit through 3 OTs in person. RIP the Frost's playoff game OT streak.

I hope it's not the last day I get to cheer for the ❄️ this year

This is *still* as even as it could be so far. No sweeps this round!

I'll leave my thoughts on whether the game-winning goal scorer should have been in the game to myself 🤐

That Montréal v Minnesota game on Saturday was insane. I'll gladly take more of that, regardless of outcome, but with fewer head hits please.

2 playoff games in one day! We are truly blessed

I hope we don't see any more major penalties like on Thursday 😬

Best of 5 goes so quick, we've seen a reverse sweep before but Ottawa will be in a tough spot if they can't win today.

My post from Thursday had incorrect "Win 1st Round in" x games probabilities, it favored 5 games too much. I've edited that post and corrected it going forward.

Edit: An error made the "Win 1st Round In:" probabilities quite off, which I have since corrected. I can't edit the post photos, so I will put the corrected graphic in a comment to try to catch anyone viewing this in the future. My apologies, I'll be more diligent. Yet another lesson in checking your results before publishing!

Playoffs! 🙌

I'm working out some bugs but will have a Win Cup% starting Sunday.

There's a lot less to say in the playoffs compared to a late regular season game day; there's only 4 teams, and all we care about are Ws, type of win doesn't matter anymore. So today I'll just say that I hope both teams have fun 😀

Before the playoffs begin tomorrow I want to briefly retrospect on the regular season in full. Once the playoff race really heated up I started posting each game day, but here I have the entire regular season and charts of each day's make playoffs %, make final %*, win cup %*, Elo rating, and projected regular season points. I hope you like them!

* I'll confess, I was put in my place after assuming that 1st place would select 4th place this year. The model and these charts assumed for the postseason that would be the case, but going forward for the playoffs I will correct that. I think the differences will be small but not trivial. Last year 3rd and 4th were tied on points percentage so it was more understandable. I underestimated Montréal likely looking at their regular season matchup with Minnesota and finding playing them favorable to playing Ottawa despite a decent difference in points. Next year I'll probably have to assume it's a toss up which team is selected, but that will depend on the playoff format we have next year.

A few things stand out:

• Until the midpoint of the season New York looked good and had a good chance of making the playoffs and then steadily dropped.
• Toronto meanwhile slid in the early to middle sections of the season and then made an impressive late comeback, but in the last week or so seemingly lost every game that would have put them in a comfortable position.
• Montréal and Boston didn't really separate themselves from Minnesota until the last month or so when they just kept on winning and eventually cemented the two best points percentage records ever of the 20 records to date.
• The Elo ratings for each day and the points projections for the same day correlate extremely strongly. That makes some inherent sense, but it's surprising how strong it looks on its face. It raises the question of whether points/point % might be equally predictive and calculating Elo might not have provided a significant benefit and how much better other methods would be. I don't have hard numbers for metrics of the forecasting skill the model had at this time, but I'll be researching questions like that for next year.

Let me know if you have questions or feedback. See you in the playoffs!